MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING – 27TH FEBRUARY 2025

One of our English exam students had an amazing day in London to see Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell perform Much Ado About Nothing, with amazing seats too! 

MCLAREN TRIP – 3RD FEBRUARY 2025

One of our students had an amazing opportunity to visit the McLaren test centre in Woking. He created an art response following his visit. 

LIFE SKILLS MEAL – 9TH JANUARY 2025

As part of their extra Life Skills lessons, Bea and teacher, Laura, fried some steaks, cooked potatoes in the air fryer and cooked their broccoli in an unusual way ….!

Next week it’s bacon and fried duck eggs on toast apparently 😄

READ FOR GOOD READATHON – 8TH JANUARY 2025

Our Northleigh students are taking part in this national sponsored readathon throughout the month of February. The aim is to read anything and everything, get sponsored for their endeavours and then all the money raised is used to provide books in major UK children’s hospitals and school libraries.

What a lovely way to raise money.

Happy Reading everyone.

Still with the English department, huge congratulations to one of our students who has been told that their short story “Fight or Flight” will be published in a book of 100 word short stories. They were also sent a certificate of merit. 😀

THANK YOU TO ALL OUR VOLUNTEERS – 10TH DECEMBER 2024

JLR team number 1 weeded and tidied in and around our wildlife pond, and then found time to re-shape our living willow sculpture. JLR team number 2 worked so hard to sheep-proof and fence our land adjacent to the fields. Great work!

We were very lucky to have not one, but two teams of volunteers from NFU over two consecutive days. They managed to deep clean and redecorate our Maths and Textile classrooms; as well as do some general cleaning around the school and ‘hoover’ the astro pitch!

And then a big hello and thank you to new volunteer, Sarah, who spent the day getting our school Christmas ready with Art teacher, Josie.

ENGLISH PUBLICATION – 6TH DECEMBER 2024

Huge congratulations to one of our students for getting their story:

The Shadow Tomb, published by Young Writers.

MELTING SNOWMAN BISCUITS  – 5TH DECEMBER 2024

In Cookery, these fabulous melting snowman biscuits were made with our fabulous students.

Our students have also been busy this term making pickled onions, blackberry jam and hot chocolate stirrers to sell at our end of term Christmas Coffee Morning for Northleigh Families.

WINTER WALKS – 2ND DECEMBER 2024

Back outdoors, some of our students enjoyed some walks in the countryside and took some beautiful photos

TEAMBUILDING – 28TH NOVEMBER 2024

But sometimes the cold weather defeats even our hardy students, so for one of the Outdoor Adventure lessons, our students retreated indoors for a team building session.

WOODWORK CHRISTMAS TREES/REINDEER – 25TH NOVEMBER 2024

ART CHALLENGE – 21ST NOVEMBER 2024

One of our students taking on an Art challenge which involved drawing in only red or blue LED light so that he could’t see what colours he was drawing with. The rainbow is the end result.

SHOEBOX APPEAL – 20TH NOVEMBER 2024

3 of our students visited the Samaritans Purse headquarters in Coventry to go behind the scenes of their Operation Christmas Shoebox Appeal.

POLICE EDUCATIONAL VISIT – 19TH NOVEMBER 2024

The police came to talk to us about their work in the local community and careers within the police force.

Natural Form Wonders – 15th November 2024

Two of Northleigh’s wonderful photography students spent their lesson experimenting with dual tone lighting with natural forms.

Below is the process and the final stunning result! 

POSTCARD AUCTION RESULTS! 6TH OCTOBER 2024 

Thank you so much to everyone who helped us raise an incredible £9,068 on Sunday 6th October in our first celebrity postcard auction. All 95 pieces of artwork sold. 

Every pound that has been raised in our Charity Auction will go towards enabling us to continue our very important work of supporting our wonderful student.

HATTON LOCK WALKS – 3RD OCTOBER 2024

Always a favourite, walking and talking at Hatton Locks

BADDESLEY CLINTON TRIP – 1ST OCTOBER 

VISIT TO LAMP – 30TH SEPTEMBER 2024

THANK YOU NFU – 29TH SEPTEMBER 2024

Just before term began, we welcomed volunteers from NFU who got stuck in to clean, tidy, garden and paint in readiness for the students arriving. We are especially grateful and excited about the electric power sweeper they donated, which will make cleaning our astro pitch so much easier.

TRIP TO THE RSC ROMEO AND JULIET – 28TH SEPTEMBER 2024

There was much excitement at the prospect of going to see the ballet of Romeo & Juliet at the RSC … apparently it was magical.

WORK EXPERIENCE – 23RD SEPTEMBER 2024

We’re very grateful to East Chase Farm in Kenilworth who have been letting our student get some work experience.

ANIMAL CARE VISIT – 21ST SEPTEMBER 2024

As part of her Animal Care course, one of our students visited the stables and met Custard the pony.

THANK YOU TO OUR SUMMER VOLUNTEERS! – 28th August 2024

We have been inundated with volunteers over the school holidays and I wasn’t exaggerating – we have welcomed volunteers from Baxi, NFU, Aviva, JLR, CoreLogic, National Grid and a youth group.

At least over 120 man days of volunteering!

And if we had had to employ people to do these jobs, it would have cost us £3000 this Summer alone!

We know how much our volunteers get out of their experiences at Northleigh because they regularly tell us – and we are all so incredibly grateful of them for coming to our school, many of them as repeat volunteers.

We also had a group of 32 teenage girls from Northampton were camping out at Hatton and decided to hike over to Northleigh and spend the day volunteering for us.

They managed to weed and clean up our artificial sports pitch, clean all the outside furniture and weed the gravel paths. Our Northleigh chickens even benefited from a clean of their coop and fresh beds.

Big shout out to Jenny the drummer!

CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR EXAM STUDENTS – 26th August 2024

Congratulations to all our current and former Northleigh students who got their exam results this Summer.

Our students sat a variety of examinations and achieved results in AS level, GCSEs, Functional Skills, Entry Level Certificates, Cambridge Technical Certificates and Rock School Drums.

You all worked very hard and should be proud of your achievements.

NORTHLEIGH’S FIRST ARTIST POSTCARD AUCTION 2024 – 22nd July 2024

Northleigh is running in September for 2 weeks our first postcard auction. Over 90 signed one off designs from artists and celebrities across a range of creative industries just to help raise funds for Northleigh. Hosted by Gildings Auction house with an online bidding platform. More information to follow nearer the time. 

FORMER NORTHLEIGH STUDENT BBC QUESTION TIME – 12th July 2024

We always love to hear what former Northleigh students are getting up to. Jordy has expressed how positive and happy about life he is, and very excited to be an independent driver finally! Even more impressive was his starring role quizzing Nigel Farage in the leaders debate on BBC Question Time! if you’d like to see the full conversation, it’s still available on BBC iPlayer, dated 28th June and Jordy pops up at around the 55 minute mark.

THANK YOU TESCO – 11th July 2024

We have a very special relationship with Tesco. Each week they donate food to us, which is used in lunches, BBQs and Cookery lessons. Moreover, they donate more food when it comes to our Summer and Christmas Fairs that we can use to provide catering. One person in particular has been a very special friend to us, Gillian, at Tesco Solihull. We are very grateful indeed.

BBQ BUILDING TEAM – 11th July 2024

Now we love a BBQ at Northleigh, we do, we do, we do …. and our student, who is training to be a bricklayer has completely spoilt us by building an amazing BBQ in the grounds.

Now we can have a meat BBQ and a veggie BBQ and speed up those queues at lunchtime. Great work!

SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS 11th July 2024

The Science department has certainly been busy and creative these past few weeks. Their experiments have involved students creating huge bubbles, making their own invisible ink and investigating how long it takes for a biscuit to drop in to hot liquid ….

RCS PLAYMAKING FESTIVAL – 10th July 2024

Three students took part in the RSC Playmaking festival in Stratford at the Swan Theatre on 09 July.  Here’s what the events website has to say about the festival:

This year’s Playmaking Festival is a moment to celebrate the work of young people and their teachers from across England right here in Stratford-upon-Avon. It is a culmination of the work that happens in classrooms across schools we work in long-term partnership with as part of our Associate Schools Programme, and the work that takes place with our local school community in Stratford.

Over the course of the week, over 250 young people from Special Education Needs Schools, Primary and Secondary schools performed on the Swan Theatre stage . On 9th July, Hamlet was  performed by students from Associate Schools in County Durham, Kent, Northampton, North Staffordshire and Warwickshire. It was a relaxed performance with BSL interpretation, and captioning. This production has inclusion at its heart – supporting more people to experience this story of grief and a search for belonging.

HATTON COUNTRY WORLD VISIT – 8th July 2024

A few lovely photos from a recent visit to our favourite friends at Hatton Country World.

SIX THE MUSICAL STUDENT REVIEW – 2nd July 2024

Written by one of our students who wants to remain anonymous, but who clearly enjoyed the recent trip to see Six The Musical.

BEEKEEPING – 2nd July 2024

Tony our beekeeper is entering buzzzzy season (do you see what I did there …), so two of our students got suited and booted and came to help as part of their Animal Care lessons.

NORTHLEIGH CHICKENS! – 30th June 2024

I’d like to formally introduce you to some new members of the Northleigh family – Named – Skittles, Liqorice and Chicken. Lily has written some words about our new feathered friends, so I will hand over to her.

NORTHLEIGH SUMMER FAIR 2024 – 28th June 2024

Thank you to everyone who came along to our Northleigh Summer Fair & Exhibition.

There were stalls selling crafts made by the students, jewellery, cakes and plants.

There were games – frisbee golf, guess how many beads in a jar, guess the names of the toy rabbits. There was the raffle. There were home-made hot dogs and pizzas to buy

The Northleigh rock band played a full set, and of course there was all the fabulous student photography, artwork and displays from the other departments at Northleigh to view.

The weather was perfect, so it was lovely to see students and their families, teachers, supporters and volunteers sitting outside in the sunshine.

In total we raised just under £2000, which is incredible, and then one kind anonymous person donated the amount to round it up to a grand £2k.

Huge thanks must go to our teaching staff who put so much time and effort into making this event a success. Likewise we are very grateful to all the volunteers who gave their time to help get us ready – particular thanks go to the team at eon energy who tidied the grounds and erected the marquee and staging.

DEAF AWARENESS WEEK – 6th-12th May 2024

In recognition of Deaf Awareness Week this week, our Humanities teacher, Roisin, has found a word search in finger spelling for you to test yourselves. She has also very kindly provided the finger spelling alphabet to help you!

SENSORY GARDEN – 10th May 2024

Preparing the garden for this year’s wildflower seed sowing.

DISC GOLF – 3rd May 2024

Some of our students getting a lesson from the expert, Team GB Noah Smithson, at Quarry Bank Disc Golf in Leamington.

EARTH PUZZLE – 2nd May 2024

Alfie successfully completed the 500 piece Earth jigsaw puzzle – however, the eagle-eyed amongst you may notice that it should really be called the 499 piece jigsaw!

THANK YOU SAINSBURY’S! – 22nd March 2024

All these fantastic seeds have been donated to us by Sainsbury’s Saltisford in Warwick as part of their ‘Seeds for Schools’ initiative.

Looks like we’re going to be busy!

MIDSUMMER NIGHT DREAM – 21st March 2024

Our Northleigh English students recently visited the RSC to see the latest play ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Our students absolutely loved it and gave it a definite 5 star review.

They all agreed that it was funny and inventive, with great special effects and interesting lighting.

TEXTILE CREATIONS – 8th March 2024

How gorgeous are these lovely photos of our students’ work this term in Textiles? They have used a variety of mixed media and materials – including fabric, felt, paper, clay, paints, wool, buttons, moss and LED lights – to produce these beautiful plants, flowers, pots and vases. Well done everyone!

GUIDE DOG VISITS NORTHLEIGH – 1st March

In early March, there was much excitement at school when it leaked that the students who study animal care would be getting a visit from a real life guide dog! Needless to say, quite a few extra students and staff turned up for that particular lesson ….. It was lovely to welcome Ruby the puppy, aged just 17 weeks, along with her handler, John.